Women in Horror Roundtable Discussion hosted by Spec Pub

Mar 1

For March Women in Horror Month, Spec Pub invited horror creators to discuss books, inspirations, projects and how women are elevating horror with our editors. Links to the books mentioned are at the bottom of the discussion.

Our Contributors Are:

LCW Allingham - LCWA

LCW Allingham is an award-winning author, artist, and editor. Her publications include her novel, LADY, and novella MUSE, as well as short fiction. She is the co-founder and executive editor of the indie press, Speculation Publications, and a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Horror Writers Association. She resides near Philadelphia with her family, her animals, and her ever growing art collection.

River Eno - RE

River Eno is managing copy editor and co-owner of Speculation Publications. She writes dark-erotic fantasy novels (The Anastasia Evolution Series) and horror-adjacent short stories found in various anthologies, usually with a bend toward paganism or pagan archetypes and themes. Residing on the east coast with rescue dogs, old turtles and family, River is vegan, a practicing witch, an herbalism enthusiast with polyglottal aspirations. Updates for River can be found at: rivertheauthor.com and speculationpub.com

Hope Madden - HM

Hope Madden is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, and film critic. Her first novella, Roost, published in March of 2022 with Off Limits Press. Her second novella, Killer Pictures, published in 2025 from World Castle Publishing. Her first feature film, Obstacle Corpse, is now streaming on Amazon Prime and Tubi. Madden’s work has also found a home in many anthologies, including two from Speculation Publications, four with Wicked Shadow Press, and one with Arbutus Studios. New writing and updates are available on hopemadden.com and many of her short films, podcasts and movie reviews are available on her YouTube channel @maddwolfcolumbus.

Jessica L. Sparrow - JLS

Jessica L. Sparrow is a Maryland-based author of spine-chilling Puerto Rican Gothic Tales, eerie thrillers, and soul-stirring poetry. Drawing from her Afro-Boriquena roots, she infuses her work with cultural spiritualism, raising stories that echo the dark, hidden corners of the human world and the spiritual realm surrounding her. Her poetry collection, Visions & Nightmares of a GothicRican (2024), unfolds like a fevered dream, where the veil between the living and the dead lifts, echoing the eerie atmosphere and psychological tension inspired by Poe. In a literary whirlwind, she unleashed Burning Slumber, a nod to the Tainos, featured in the mind-bending anthology Beyond the Bounds of Infinity (2024). Sparrow’s words echo the haunting ferocity of timeless Gothic classics. Yet, they are infused with a voice that has long been overlooked—one born and raised in the heart of Newark, New Jersey, deeply rooted in her Puerto Rican heritage, and offering a perspective never heard. website: www.sparrowsinkwell.com Tik Tok: @jessicaLsparrow Instagram: @SparrowsInkwell Facebook: @SparrowsInkwell

A.C. Wise - ACW

A.C. Wise is the author of the novels Wendy, Darling, Hooked, and Ballad of the Bone Road, along with various novellas, collections, and short stories. Her work has won the Sunburst Award, and been a finalist for the Nebula, Stoker, World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and Locus Awards, among others. In addition to her fiction, she contributes regular review columns to Locus and Apex Magazine. Find her online at www.acwise.net.

Nicole M. Wolverton - NMW

Nicole M. Wolverton is a Philadelphia-based fear enthusiast and author of A Misfortune of Lake Monsters (2024), The Trajectory of Dreams (2013), and the upcoming Meat Sweats, as well as 50+ creative nonfiction and short stories published in anthologies and magazines like Mslexia and The Saturday Evening Post. She holds a master’s degree in horror and storytelling and is currently pursuing another in gastrohorror. She writes and studies horror because joy is fleeting, but dread has real staying power.

So to start at the begining…

Q1: LCW Allingham : Why are women’s voices important in horror?

Nicole M. Wolverton: Not that women were ever truly ABSENT from horror (the first-ever on-purpose horror novel is thought to have been written by Margaret Cavendish–NOT Horace Walpole as is usually cited), but we haven’t been the majority in the genre, historically. Because of that, women traditionally haven’t been treated well–we breast along boobily and all that, get stabbed (unless we’re virgins), etc. As more women become creators in the genre, we change that… and change the definition of what people consider horror.

Hope Madden: When women’s voices aren’t loud in this genre, it tends to become a landscape of victimization that is bland, colorless, predictable, and mean. When not written by women, female characters are too often the muse, the tragedy, the object, but too rarely a character, let alone the voice. This genre, like all art, needs all the voices, all the variety, every opportunity to create empathy, or it loses its vibrancy and relevance.

River Eno: Women’s voices are important in every genre where they have been minimized, but this especially true in genres where there is a high potential for female characters to be restricted to either victims or scapegoats. Without women writing horror, those characters often serve only as catalysts whose brutal deaths, or need for protection, are created solely to help the male hero realize his potential. However difficult it can be within the patriarchal system, if feminine voices don’t take up space, we lose the opportunity to bring life to the feminine heroes that can teach women how to be their own saviors.

Jessica L. Sparrow: Our voices have been the ones to experience true horror throughout all our lives, as well as the lives of those who came before us, and, most tragically, those who came after us. Women and children have always been the spoils or collateral damage to whatever male-dominated power trip occurs around us. Therefore, it is important that we lend our voices to the horror genre, or any genre, so that we are seen more than what a “man’s world” made us out to be and that we are reminded that we can be as cunning and as vengeful as the Gods. After all, we are the bringers of life and death, and like creation itself, we carry the latter with empathy, restraint, and veneration.

A.C. Wise: I agree with what’s been said here thus far! Women’s voices have been traditionally marginalized in horror, and there is still a perception among many audiences that not that many women write horror, or that women writing horror is a new phenomenon. As others have pointed out, women have been here since the beginning. If we keep shouting long enough and loud enough, maybe eventually that perception will start to shift. The more voices of all genders, backgrounds, ethnicities, ages, and different types of lived experience that have the opportunity to tell their stories, the richer the genre becomes!

Q2: Nicole M. Wolverton: River, Hope, and Jessica mentioned women as victims in the horror genre, essentially serving men to further their goals. My guess there's a bit of wish fulfillment, too. It makes me happy to turn male-centered tropes and fantasies on their heads--so name a recent(ish) woman-authored work that has messed with your head in the best possible way and expanded/changed the way women function in horror. How do you see it evolving the definition of what the horror genre is?

LCWA: Specifically examining the male wish fulfillment aspect of horror, I have to say Monika Kim’s The Eyes are the Best Part fits that bill for me. The surface story alone is grotesque and riveting, but what makes the book great is that when you lift the first layer and a complex network of depth beneath it. It makes the story so much more frightening and powerful than mere horror. Ji-won is always being observed in a way that has nothing to do with who she is. She is cast as the helpless, naive damsel or the anime sex doll in the fantasies of men throughout the story.

This type of story, building levels of horror into one plotline, combining a real-life existence with something supernatural or abnormal, and dragging the reader into a marginalized experience they otherwise would not even notice, this is the future I want in horror. This is the way horror unites and heals.

JLS: There are so many great stories that come to mind but I have to spotlight a horror book written by a Latine woman. The majority of our culture is still trying to break free from the generational curse of being stuck in a heavily male-centered culture. The worst of it all, in my opinion, are when those patriarchal traditions are upheld by the women in our society. Agustina Bazterrica brings this theme to the forefront in Tender is The Flesh, alongside cannibalistic farming, by presenting us with female characters that either stay silent to the atrocities being committed towards other women of their community or by lending their voices to aid in such suppression. These traits are represented by the main character’s sister and his estranged wife. I won’t get into what exactly they are allowing to occur because spoilers. I will say this, Bazterrica shines a light on something that is not new when it comes to social horrors but she unnerves us by reminding us that it still exists. A terror as old as time says that in order for women to survive and be vindicated as “productive” members of society, they must conform and cheerlead the patriarchy while simultaneously marginalizing themselves and other women.

While these female character traits have existed for centuries, this book raises a mirror to the hypocrisy and the villainy of the anti-feminist feminist who dismantles her own humane rights just to survive in a society they helped create. I am aware that this is a problem in our world overall, no matter the culture, but I feel like the Latine/BIPOC society is just starting to catch up how deeply problematic these ideals have been as they deemed them as traditional roles. This is why we need to highlight women BIPOC writers: so that our matriarchs can recognize their roles in helping to cast the spell that is one of our many generational curses. Here’s hoping they all get the chance to break that spell with us.

NMW: I love both of those books so much, LCW and Jessica–it’s not lost on me that both are about cannibalism to some extent. We are living through a cannibalism decade, I think.

ACW: I haven’t had a chance to read The Eyes Are the Best Part yet, but it’s certainly on my list, and I agree that Tender is the Flesh does some fascinating things in looking at gender, relationships, what it means to be human, and and the lies society is willing to tell itself. The first book that came to mind for me when reading your question, Nicole, is Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfit. It’s a dark, brutal, and uncomfortable novel that explores misogyny, transphobia, and radicalization, among other themes, delving into the way hate feeds hate in a ripple effect that impacts all of society. While it doesn’t necessarily flip the violence against women trope, it does look at it from a perspective that doesn’t glorify or trivialize it, and it keeps the focus firmly on the people who are impacted by violence and hatred versus the perpetrators or even consumers of violence and what they get out of it.

RE: I'm not sure that Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder messed with my head, and I wouldn't classify it as traditional horror, more body horror and psych horror, but I do think she powerfully illustrates the oppressive horror of patriarchal motherhood. Her decision to leave the characters unnamed was strangely powerful in recognizing the universal lid put over all women to perform beautifully in motherhood and even general multi-tasking to be honest. To me, the protagonist's transformation into a dog represented the inevitable, and at times unwanted, changes mothers undergo—changes that are more often than not suppressed or vilified in a male-dominated system.

There's an old saying, and I think, at least I hope, it's a bit different today—women marry hoping the man changes, and men marry hoping the woman never changes. It's spoken as something more frivolous than I think it actually is. This cautionary tale informs young women they must take on the unreasonable task of molding their partners into what they desire while remaining perpetually "desirable" themselves. When you add the crushing expectations of motherhood—such as the pressure to bond immediately—the reality is terrifying for those who fall outside the perceived norm. We all change. Our bodies change. Period. And after motherhood, often in ways beyond our control, yet we are still judged against a standard of patriarchal female perfection in appearance and actions.

Q3: Hope Madden: I’m grateful for the talk of new(ish) books because I have not read Tender Is the Flesh but will do so immediately. It makes me wonder about books you read when you were young that made you think horror was the genre for you. I think for me it was actually Flannery O’Connor’s short story The Life You Save May Be Your Own, which buried this story of a serial killer underneath the story of a con man, and as a kid reading it, I was so overcome with worry for Lucynell Crater that I couldn’t breathe. The emotional sleight of hand in that story fascinated me so much that I found myself trying to do it, terribly unsuccessfully, even then and I have literally never written any piece of fiction since then that was not horror.

LCWA: So I think I was born knowing that horror was for me. I can’t remember a time when I didn't want spooky stuff, but when I started reading Christopher Pike books in middle school, I think the possibilities of horror really opened up to me. Before that everything followed a formula, and I knew where everything was going to end up eventually. Christopher Pike’s books were weird and complicated and got into some very dark and real stuff that satisfied my need to explore the shadows more than anything I’d read before. Once I saw that you could go anywhere with horror, I was really hooked for life.

NMW: This is kind of a weird answer, but the Trixie Belden series. It’s very young adult/older middle grade mystery, but there was an undercurrent of paranormal, almost approaching horror, to many of the books–I started reading them when I was maybe in the second or third grade, and I loved them. I still love them! If I had to choose a book that was more traditionally horror, I’d go with Jane-Emily, and Witches’ Children by Patricia Clapp. I found it hidden away in my grandparents’ house when I was a kid and was fascinated–probably because it involves those garden gazing balls, and my grandmother always had one in her flower bed. I didn’t find it scary, really–but I found it sufficiently creepy in that I always half imagined seeing a creepy face in my grandmother’s gazing ball, and the idea was just delicious.

RE: I don't think I ever had a conscious thought that horror was for me; I do write blood and violence, but in a more horror-adjacent way with sarcasm and jokes. I did read two stories in my younger years that no doubt shaped my writing. Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews and Salem's Lot by Stephen King. The selfish cruelty of humans in Flowers, and the bloody, but true-to-who-they-are vampires in Salem's Lot blend into so many of my stories. I think any writer, or artist, that suffers from depression and anxiety, whether innate or gained from circumstance, will find a cathartic home in horror, in all its forms. I also think I'm a fairly positive-neutral person, meaning I'm not particularly optimistic, however, I don't slide into the abyss of life and world happenings, because I can dole out retribution in my stories, lol.

LCW- Christopher Pike is da shyte!

HM: Those garden gazing balls fascinated me as a kid! I always hoped the neighbors who had them were secretly channeling something supernatural.

RE: When I was really young, I thought, and hoped, if you got close enough you’d be sucked into another dimension. We never had one, so I never knew.

JLS: I have one and trust me, we are channeling something magical…all day everyday.

ACW: One of my earliest introductions to horror that I can definitively point to is the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series compiled by Alvin Schwartz. I was already fascinated by ghost stories and all things spooky, but I think that series is what really brought it home for me. As LCW mentioned, Christopher Pike was also formative, along with authors like Caroline B. Cooney, Lael Littke, and Richie Tankersley Cusik. There’s a fantastic and long-running series published at Reactor where Alissa Burger revisits those books called Teen Horror Time Machine. Reading the essays is fascinating for me, since I know I devoured so many of the books she’s covering and at the same time, I have little to no memory regarding their plots, characters, setting, etc. All I remember is I couldn’t get enough of them at the time. But despite my faulty memory, they did indeed help cement my love of horror!

HM: I have no tattoos, but if I did it would be one of the illustrations from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The combination of word and image in those were so wonderfully scarring.

JLS: I love how creepy and yet simple those book covers are. Maybe that’s what lends into its creepiness some more; the simplicity.

Horror for me started through storytellers in the family. Anytime the night winds down after a family party or get together, we just can’t help ourselves into passing on family folklore of haunted happenings. Then came the horror films and TV series, mostly Hammer horror films, Twilight Zone, and Hitchcock. It wasn’t until I read the Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe in the fourth grade is where my obsession of Horror books/stories began. The short of it all, I was born into a family full of horror fanatics and I ran with it to the public library. Thank you Newark Public Library.

Q4 A.C. Wise: We’ve talked a bit about early formative horror reading and recent/current horror titles. To reinforce the fact that women have always been a part of the genre and always will be, I have a two-part question. What are some less recent (however you want to define that) works by female authors that you feel maybe didn’t get the love and appreciation they deserved when they were first published and that you wish more people knew about? What are some upcoming horror titles by female authors that you’re particularly excited about?

HM: I really loved Samantha Kolesnik’s True Crime and I don’t think it got enough attention when it was released. And knowing that Tananarive Due has a new novel due out soon has me pretty geeked.

JLS: Hope, I didn’t know Due was coming out with a new book. That is exciting; she’s an exceptional author that draws me in with how wonderfully human her characters are, flaws and all.

Tananarive Due is definitely an author who I feel doesn’t get the worldwide acclaim that she deserves. I feel the same about Isabel Canas and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, their writing takes me to when I would read books by International Latine Authors such as Isabel Allende. Those works were important to me as much as the literature I was taught about in school because I was able to relate to the tropes in the Latine books. So, here we are decades later and we are getting more books written by Latine women authors that are not a rarity to be labeled as International. We’ve come a long way and still have so much more ground to cover.

LCWA: Oooh, I third seeing a lot more of Tananarive Due.

I am glad to see Tanith Lee coming back into the narrative again. For a long time her work was eclipsed by certain louder voices but she was so important in upending the established male centered tropes. Her introduction of dark feminine power into the collective psyche of horror, not as something evil but as a force to be reckoned is the foundation for a lot of our “good for her” horror we see now. She has influenced so many of my favorite authors, and was apparently just about the coolest woman ever.

As for work that I am excited about, of course, having loved The Eyes are the Best Part, I’m excited for Monika Kim’s second book, Molka and I’m really intrigued by the premise for Bethany C. Morrow’s The Body which just came out.

Lastly, not to embarrass anyone but I am truly psyched for Nicole Wolverton’s Meat Sweats. What a freaking title!

JLS: Hahaha, not the Meat Sweats! I have to check that book out.

HM: Due is also working on her first short film. As someone with one big old foot also in horror film, I could not be more excited.

RE: Though again, not hard core horror, but more sci-fi and psych horror, Octavia Butler's Fledgling is a book I wish more people knew about. I personally love any vampire story that isn't the same Victorian sex-shaming act. With so many avenues to go down when you're writing about beings that have been alive for hundreds of years, most stories fall short. With Octavia being a woman of color, the concepts of ancestry and eugenics within the story drive deep, and it would seem as much or even more relevant today than it was in 2005 when it was published. I highly recommend it. I had heard it was the first in a series but she passed away before that came to pass. It's a shame as her perspective was incredibly unique within the vampire world.

I too am looking forward to Meat Sweats!! As a vegan, omgs, I can't think of ANYTHING more gross!

NMW: Y’all are too kind to me, truly! Meat Sweats for everyone! :)

And River, I was also going to suggest Fledgling as a book that deserves WAY more love. I read it during a semester-long course on Octavia Butler, and it is so bonkers! I will also add a bit of love for a YA horror novel that came out in 2015 that I still re-read now and then: The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated) by Ainslie Hogarth (who also wrote Motherthing, which I think more people are familiar with).

For upcoming books, When I Was Death by Alexis Henderson and Molka by Monika Kim, for sure. I’m also incredibly excited for D.A. Jobe’s Palmetto Boy–she had a story in Bodies Full of Burning, so you know I’ve got a soft spot for all the writers who participated in that anthology!

ACW: Oooh. I somehow missed that Tananarive Due had a new book coming out soon. I’ll absolutely have to add that to my TBR list, along with all the other titles suggested here!

Q5 Jessica L. Sparrow: I love reading supernatural horror especially of those from all walks of life and cultures but I have leaned into more BIPOC women authors such as Due, Moreno-Garcia, and Isabel Canas. In describing in some of their works some would mention “magic realism” as one of their tropes. I am curious to get your perspective on how some of these authors or any other BIPOC women authors that you have read were able to portray this particular trope without reducing their characters into stereotypes?

LCWA: This makes me think of Carmen Maria Machado short story collection Her body and other Parties and her take on the green ribbon story. It’s such a universally known story and yet in “The Husband Stitch” she claims it and exposes what it may have been the whole time. It isn’t angry or loud or aggressively feminist. It’s just laid out for everyone to see and with those “facts” it must be acknowledged as truth.

RE: For me, it's in the grounding. I think any magical realism (within any genre) when added to a very stable reality only enhances that reality. And when BIPOC women are telling the stories, even fiction, those stories are steeped in their realities, in their family ancestry and culture leading us into truths like generational racism. Morrison's Beloved, though magical realism, is grounded in horrific trauma, and never do the characters succumb to trope. Anna-Marie McLemore's YA stories are grounded by the history of the LGBTQ+ community and McLemore's own experiences. The more anchored a story's premise is in reality, and the more the author adheres to the systems they've created, the characters are already too real to be affected negatively by the magick.

NMW: I think all of us here are deeply aware of how easily “magic” can become shorthand for “otherness.” One of the things I appreciate about how the writers Jessica names is that they ground the supernatural in cultural specificity in a way that makes it more worldview, history, and resistance. The uncanny in their stories speak to the pressures that shape them, so it deepens identity in a meaningful way. I’m thinking specifically of Aliette de Bodard, for instance.

Q6 River Eno: There was a study in 2018 that, in a nutshell, found people who watch horror react and recover quicker to real life horrors. In essence, horror acts as practice for threats and trauma, allowing people to confront their fears in a safe environment. So, regularly indulging in art and media that induces fear can help fear be less overwhelming, which I find fascinating and also makes a lot of sense. My question is, where does your horror come from? Do you use a lot of your own experiences and traumas to create the horror you create or do you rely on the world around you to give you inspiration?

HM: First of all, I have always believed this to be true. Horror is catharsis. You face demons, metaphors or no, and you survive them. I also think this is why horror, especially cinema, reflects society and its fears better than any other genre (with the possible exception of science fiction). When drama depicts society’s failings, we are reliving the drudgery of society. When horror does it, we see it for all its demonic, destructive, horrifying truth without being so literal, and we face it and we survive it.

The horror I write is often the ugliest and bloodiest kind of wish fulfillment, which I should almost certainly not admit. I kill people so I don’t kill people. You know what would be great? If vampires killed Incels instead of young women. What if someone literally worked themself to death, and no one noticed until they came back and ate the whole C-suite? It’s not the only kind of horror I write because sometimes you just stumble across a great character and want to see what they’re up to, or sometimes I need to make myself try something that makes me uncomfortable. But usually I kill people that seem to me need to be killed and it really is cathartic.

LCWA : I mentioned earlier that I was born with the horrors, but to elaborate on that, I was born with an overactive brain that never shuts off. My earliest memories are sitting in the dark imagining what was waiting there for me so I consumed horror as a way to prepare myself for the world I really felt around me. I outgrew the fear of monsters under my bed (sort of) but my brain never stopped considering worst case scenarios. Complicated relationships. Undiagnosed ADHD. Emotional abuse. Being a woman in the world. I grew up a millennial of the 90s, an era often idealized, but a time that quietly hated women and girls. Writing got those horrors out of my head and became a way to process what I thought about things when my conscious mind was too confused to see clearly.

In my writing you will find a lot of relationship dynamics, covert abuse, religious themes and confronting toxic ideas about femininity. Horror allows me to deconstruct these beliefs that were built into me by taking away the constrictions of American morality. I like to take these very normal patterns and cut them open, spill the guts on them on the table to be picked through and examined.

ACW: I agree with what Hope and LCW said about horror as catharsis and as a means of processing anxiety, or generally processing thoughts and scenarios. As writers, our job is what if, right? And as horror writers, our job is what if something bad happens. I do occasionally draw from my own life in my writing, but I rely on the world around me for inspiration as well. Real life is plenty horrifying most days, but there is something therapeutic about being able to take those horrors, crunch them down, and contain them safely on the page.

NMW: I often write in the young adult space, and it’s specifically because I do not recall my teen years with any sort of fondness. I was such a weird kid, living in a weird world–and I wanted to recognize myself in what I was reading. So much of what I write now originates from those years. Those feelings of being Other and the worry that nothing I did would ever be right or that I might ever be able to make my own decisions. From that standpoint, the horrors I write are internal–yet like AC says, the world is a very scary place. It’s not uncommon for me to read a news story or overhear a conversation and get an idea.

No matter where the ideas come from, though, I feel a sense of comfort (in that misery loves company kind of way) that someone else is probably feeling terrified by the same things I am. They might get the same sense of catharsis that River, Hope, and LC talk about when they read my… I guess the word is solution… to the horrifying problem at hand. River mentions the research about horror and coping with the abyss, and I’m convinced that it’s loving the horror genre and using it to process my own crap that has led to me being a hopeless optimist. It’s more than just having developed superior resilience skills–it’s being able to notice the pattern of positive changes in things just as much as I notice the shittiness.

JLS: I would have to fourth that sentiment; horror is cathartic. The horror that I would read and watch always alluded to a somewhat happy ending. That beam of hope when, at first and if done well, way in the middle, seems lost; only for the MC to gain their strength and give it one last go and wins. That is the cathartic part for me, well, at least when I was younger. Now that life has considerably changed for me internally and with the horrid environment that we have been catapulted into, I now find vengeful horror to be the soft teddy bear I rather cuddle with. However, I feel the two go hand in hand for me because still keeping a spark of hope during the utmost worst of times is my preferred way of doling out vengeance after the MC crushes a few skulls, of course.

My writing, in particular, portrays the horrors that I have experienced in my life and with the experiences that my family and our ancestors have dealt with. Being a first-born generation Puerto Rican from the mainland who was born and raised in a city long forgotten and destroyed by injustices definitely carries a lot of pain and struggles. Add being a woman in the mix, not only struggling with the external issues thrown upon us by society, and having to navigate through our internal struggles with the changes of our bodies certainly gives me plenty of writing material. I find dumping all of these issues on paper and on my characters helps to exorcise the demons that continue to haunt me. Especially, if the MC gets to pummel them into the abyss. Circling back to what I said before about crushing skulls and keeping hope alive.

Q7: LCW Allingham: Thank you all for being part of this conversation. It has been really interesting. Please share any final words on any of the subjects touched on here and tell us what you have coming up.

NMW: Thanks again for hosting this, LC and River! Recently I’ve been paying attention to the way that food is used in horror films and literature (as part of my horror academic work). The way it is often denied to women to mark them as victims or that women themselves refuse to eat as a form of agency in a patriarchal world is fascinating and fits right into this conversation. It also relates to what I’ve got coming up. I tricked Macabre Daily into giving me a monthly column on gastrohorror, the third of which just came out last week, and I’ve been doing several series on tiktok about the use of food in horror and horror-related research. I’m also currently working on the final revisions for a horror novella to be released as part of an oracle card deck in October of this year–keep an eye out for news on that, as well as news on the new release date for Meat Sweats, my vegetarian-turned-accidental cannibal novel that was initially supposed to come out this summer (never a dull moment in publishing!). Lastly, there are a few events coming up that I’m participating in:

2.28.2026 6AM EST | Virtual talk: Horror, Hospitality, and the Social Risk of Saying No (part of this year’s Goths for Breakfast/Romancing the Gothic).
2.28.2026 2PM EST | Read Local Author Showcase @ Horsham Township Library in Horsham, PA
3.10.2026 7PM EST | reading with Philly Writers Circle @ Ray’s Happy Birthday Bar in Philadelphia, PA
3.15.2026 3PM EST | Women in Horror Discussion Panel @ A Novel Idea in Philadelphia, PA
3.21.2026 noon EST | Delco Horror Haven Book Fair @ Media Community Center in Media, PA

Hope Madden: I’m really honored to have been able to participate in this fascinating conversation and I’m grateful for the new-to-me titles I’ve grabbed from questions and answers. I’m especially excited for Meat Sweats. I have a couple of short stories slated for upcoming anthologies—”Junk Food” in Arbutus Studios’ Consumed, due in March, and “Give Me Blood, and I Will Give You Freedom” in Wicked Shadow Press’s forthcoming Dark Vigil. I also co-host a regular horror podcast—13 years strong–called Fright Club, and my latest short film, Drunkula, just started its festival run, nabbing me a co-directing award at Austin Revolution Film Festival last month.

River Eno: This has been a lot of fun! I've learned a lot from each of the amazing authors and creatives here. I also realize I need to go back and re-read a few books that I read a long time ago but cannot quite recall the greatness. And then with all the new titles that have been mentioned, my TBR pile will be teetering to falling over!

In late spring I'll be re-releasing the first two Anastasia books (with new beautiful covers) in anticipation for the third, intended release in October 2026.

Spec Pub will be releasing our 2nd novella of utter speculation Loading…The Machine Child at the end of March/early April.

On 2/28/26: I'll be with LCW Allingham at Paracon at the Zlock Performing Arts Center @ 275 Swamp Road from 12-6pm.

On 3/21/26: the Delco Horror Haven Book Fair at the Media Community Center in Media PA.

ACW: Thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of this fabulous conversation! I’m looking forward to checking out the recommendations shared during the course of the discussion. My latest novel, Ballad of the Bone Road, was just released in January. Coming up, I have a handful of short stories that will be appearing in various anthologies, though I’m not sure of the release dates. I do also have a story upcoming in Nightmare Magazine, and I’m fairly certain that one is slated for April 2026. I’ll be part of the Charm City Spec reading in Baltimore on March 4 from 5-7pm at the Top of the World Observatory on the 27th floor of the World Trade Center. I’ll also be at Brooklyn Books and Booze on April 21 at Barrow’s Intense Tasting Room, and the KGB Reading Series on June 10 at the KGB Bar in NYC.

JLS: Thank you all for this amazing forum and everyone’s insights on Women in Horror. Thank you to LC and River for hosting and including me in this project it has been alot of fun. I don’t have any conferences lined up this year, just yet; I’m really focused on rewrites for my debut novel, The Amber Within. But if anyone wants to check out my previous stuff, I have a poetry collection out, Visions & Nightmares of a GothicRican, available on Amazon. I also have a Taino horror short story, “Burning Slumber,” published in the cosmic horror anthology, Beyond the Bounds of Infinity.

LCWA: Thank you all for joining the discussion. All books and authors mentioned are linked below.

* Some Links below are amazon affiliate links

Novels

The Eyes are the Best Part and Molka - Monika Kim

Tender is The Flesh - Agustina Bazterrica

Tell Me I’m Worthless - Alison Rumfit

Nightbitch - Rachel Yoder

Jane-Emily, and Witches’ Children - Patricia Clapp

Flowers in the Attic - V.C. Andrews

Salem's Lot - Stephen King

True Crime - Samantha Kolesnik

The Body - Bethany C. Morrow